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Katie Findling

Katie Findling

Digital Marketer. Next city council member of Garibaldi, Oregon

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Write a letter to the reader of a novel you haven’t written yet

Nate and I decided (well, I decided) that we need to be more productive and write more. So, three days later, when I was last-minute Christmas shopping, I saw this book and had to buy it. I flipped through the book excitedly when I got home, chattering my head off on the phone at him about all of the awesome prompts. Lo and behold, when he came back from Ft. Myers, just before bed, he said “let’s go,” to which I responded by falling asleep 30 seconds later.

Write a letter to the reader of a novel you haven’t written yet
Photo Credit: Nat Finn You can read his version by clicking on the image, above.

Well, here I am: mid-morning on New Year’s Eve, post breakfast, awake and (almost) out of bed. His is done and posted…and therefore, I am a slacker. Here it goes.

…I lied. I didn’t actually really get anything productive written at that exact moment in time, but I did get it written around 5:30 p.m. that night. I wrote a terrible draft and ultimately, scrapped that one too. It finally ended up being written during my lunch break at work the following week (shh).

A letter to a reader of a novel you haven’t written yet brings up a few other questions before such a thing can be written. What kind of novel? What counts as a novel? What will my novel be about? …and other writer’s-block-inducing questions.


NOVEL: MASTERING THE ART OF PRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION

Dear Reader,

Beautiful things can come from things created while postponing other important tasks. The creative energy that magically appears when you have a huge project, task, deadline – whatever – looming overhead is a great source of fuel for getting (other, completely unrelated) things done.

Rather than spend your valuable procrastination time beating that next level in World of Warcraft, creeping people you hardly know on Facebook, or perusing every home tour on Apartment Therapy, use that energy to do something awesome even if it’s not what you originally intended.

The logic behind this is simple: even though procrastination is bad, and you shouldn’t do it, you are doing it, so you may as well avoid being counterproductive, and working against yourself. Some of my biggest achievements were ideated while procrastinating (especially on that post-modern American poetry paper…), and I hope you can do the same. Or at a minimum, maybe you’ll learn that recipe you’ve been meaning to try, tidy the hard drive that never seems to stay organized or finally wash all of those dirty socks.

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